What Are Charter Schools?

President Obama has called upon states to encourage the expansion of charter schools. The Obama administration believes a network of innovative and high-achieving charter schools can be an important part of a state's school reform effort. The consideration of each state's application for federal "Race to the Top" funds is clearly linked to that state's acceptance and promotion of charter schools. Therefore, as the Department of Education begins accepting state applications for the federal government's largest one-time investment in K-12 public school reform, a better understanding of charter schools is apropos. By the end of the year, the department will be distributing grants from the $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund. Additionally, $1.5 billion in Title I School Improvement Program funds will be made available to improve teaching and learning for all children.
Charter schools are part of the public education system. They are not allowed to charge tuition. They provide an alternative to other public schools. When enrollment in a charter school is over subscribed, admission is frequently allocated by lottery-based admissions. Charter schools can be primary or secondary schools and receive public money. Charter school funding is dictated by the state. In many states, charter schools are funded by transferring per-pupil state aid from the school district where the charter school student resides. The Federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Part B, Sections 502–511 also authorize funding grants for charter schools. Additionally, charter schools, like other public schools, may receive funding from private donors or foundations. A charter school funding study (2008) in all 40 charter states and the District of Columbia found that charter students are funded on average at 61 cents compared to every dollar for their district peers, with charter funding averaging $6,585 per pupil compared to $10,771 per pupil at conventional district public schools. While some proponents believe this funding difference is mitigated through efficient budgeting and accountability, lower teacher and administrative salaries at charter schools compared to conventional district public schools are usually evident.
In exchange for additional accountability for producing academic results, as established by each school's charter, a charter school is not subject to some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools. Two principles guide charter schools:
First, through waivers from many of the procedural requirements of district public schools, a charter school will operate as autonomous public schools. Autonomy can be critically important for creating a school culture that maximizes student motivation by emphasizing high expectations, academic rigor, discipline, and relationships with caring adults.
Second, charter schools must be accountable for student achievement. To date, of the over 5000 charter schools founded in the United States, 12.5% have closed due to academic, financial, managerial problems, consolidation, or district interference.
The rules and structure of charter schools depend on each state's authorizing legislation and differ from state to state. A charter school is authorized to function once it has received a charter. The school's charter is a statutorily defined performance contract detailing the school's mission, program, goals, students served, methods of assessment, and explicates how success is measured. The length of time whereby charters are granted may vary by state but most are granted for 3–5 years. Charter schools are held accountable to their "sponsor." A sponsor may be either a local school board, state education agency, university, corporation, or other entity. The accountability is intended to produce and prove positive academic results while adhering to the charter (contract).
While stronger accountability is one of the key arguments in favor of charters, initial research by the United States Department of Education (1997) suggests that, in practice, charter schools were not held to higher standards of accountability compared to traditional public schools. However, by comparison, "underperforming public schools" closed due to students' poor academic results are much less compared to charter schools and are often allowed to remain open, perhaps with new leadership or restructuring, or perhaps with no change at all. Proponents of charter schools assert that charter schools are not given the opportunities to restructure often and are simply closed down when students perform poorly on academic assessments.
On June 8, 2010; U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan emphasized the need for additional effective education entrepreneurs to join the work of reforming America's lowest performing public schools, noting states must be open to charter schools. Each state's pursuit of federal "Race to the Top" funds are clearly linked to its openess toward charter schools. The stakes are too high for states financially and for students academically to restrict choice and innovation.

"States that do not have public charter laws or put artificial caps on the
growth of charter schools will jeopardize their applications under the Race
to the Top Fund... To be clear, this administration is not looking to open
unregulated and unaccountable schools. We want real autonomy for charters
combined with a rigorous authorization process and high performance
standards...I am advocating for using whatever models work for students, and
particularly where improvements have stagnated for years... We cannot
continue to do that same thing and expect different results. We cannot let
another generation of children be deprived of their civil right to a quality
education." (Duncan, 2010)

Inclusion of Students with Special Needs: More than an issue of access, it is about civil rights!

A review of post-war educational reforms and initiatives certainly corresponds to our society’s evolving desire and respect for civil rights. Yet, despite being developed alongside the civil rights and equal rights movements, the education of children with disabilities in the least restrictive environment is seldom viewed as an issue of either civil or equal rights. Reviewing mainstreaming beliefs and practices in education dating back to 1975, Lipsky and Gardner (1997) found mainstreaming is based on the assumption that a student with a disability can cope with the academic and social demands of a general education classroom. Specifically, they found mainstreaming was traditionally only “applicable to those students who were considered to be most like normal” (p. 77). By contrast, inclusion signifies that a student with a disability can benefit both academically and socially from the general education classroom, even if goals for students with disabilities were different from typically developing students. Too often mainstreaming and inclusion are used interchangeably in educational literature. They differ significantly in terms of both definition and philosophy. In a critical commentary on the field of special education, Kauffman (1998) stated, “Inclusion has become virtually meaningless, a catch-word used to give a patina of legitimacy to whatever program people are trying to sell or defend” (p. 246).
The p, eriod following 1997 marks a clear point of change in the field of special education. Requirements increasing accountability using standards-based assessment for all students as stated in the reauthorization of IDEA (1997) stressed increased access to the general education curriculum and inclusion of general educators as members of the Individualized Education Program (IEP) team. These explicit mandates promoted the opportunity for increased inclusion to become firmly established as the foundation for placement decisions. Although requirements for placement within the least restrictive environment had been in special education legislation since 1975, the explicit mandates of IDEA 1997 increased academic expectations, resulting in a shift in policies and practices within education. An effective “inclusion movement” helps ensure educators will, to the greatest extent appropriate, provide access to the general education curriculum in the least restrictive environment (LRE) for students with disabilities.
Despite progress, placement decisions are too often based on budget and staffing considerations rather than the rights of a student with disabilities to receive a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment to ensure access to the general education curriculum with optimal success. Such a practice should be met with the same outrage we now hold toward segregated water fountains, lunch counters, or bus seats. Inclusion of a student with special needs in the appropriate least restrictive environment is indeed a civil right.

Get Involved With Educational Reform!

Why should you write your congressional representatives encouraging support for a "Whole Child"approach to education? The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), now known as "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) requires reauthorization. Testifying before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and the House Education and Labor Committee on the Obama Administration's Blueprint for reauthorizing ESEA, Secretary of Education Duncan presented a compelling case for correcting many of the problems related to our current educational system. Reauthorization will only be sound and perfected through further input from educators seeking to ensure effective policy and solid implemetation of best practices. Congressman Moran's (D-VA) recent House of Representative resolution (H-1093) identifies the rationale for why you should be contacting your congressional representatives and stay well-informed about the reauthorization process. It is essential for educators to become familiar with all aspects of educational reform for this country.

At the core of reform should be the "Whole Child" philosophy, which advocates:

• Each student should be able to enter school healthy and ready to learn about and practice a healthy lifestyle. According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, the percentage of overweight children ages 6 to 11 has doubled and the number of overweight adolescents has tripled over the last 2 decades.
• Each student should be able to learn in an intellectually challenging environment that is physically and emotionally safe. According to the Indicators of School Crime and Safety report of 2009, 32 percent of middle and high school students reported being bullied during the 2007 school year.
• Each student should be able to be actively engaged in learning and connected to the school and broader community. A study on high school student engagement conducted by the Center for Evaluation & Education Policy at the Indiana University School of Education found that half of high school students feel they are an important part of their school community; what does the other half feel?
• Each student deserves access to personalized learning and is supported by qualified, caring adults. The same Indiana University study cited above reported that more than 20 percent of students say there is no adult at their school who cares about them and knows them well. Given this, why wouldn't 1 in 5 students feel disenfranchised or left behind?
• Each graduate deserves to be challenged academically and prepared for success in college or further study, and for employment in a global economy. According to the most recently published information from the Condition of Education on the availability of advanced courses in United States high schools, more than 25 percent of students do not have access to a single advanced course in mathematics, English, science, or foreign language in their high school.

Another student drops out every nine seconds in the United States. That translates to 7200 students dropping out EVERY day! Tell those students they weren't left behind! Previously, this writer encouraged in-service educators and pre-service teachers to speak up and speak out for educational reform. The time is now! The need is urgent! Act now! Contact your elected representatives.

Brain Imaging Science and Best Practices in Education

Neuropsychology is a fascinating field. Thomas Insel, MD, PhD, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, said “Brain imaging in clinical practice is the next major advance in psychiatry.”
Becoming more familiar with this science can improve educational practices. Absent concrete evidence of brain functioning, an effective multidisciplinary team can usually only produce an Individualized Educational Program (IEP) that seeks to impliment best practices that is too often based on speculation. Specially designed instruction requires a wide range of pedagogical tools and professional knowledge to effectively utilize interventions. Yet, interventions, including the use of medications, are too often grounded in trial and error. By contrast, when the brain can be reliably examined before, during, and after the introduction of interventions, treatment errors can be drastically mitigated.
For instance, increased activity in the anterior cingulate gyrus and prefrontal cortex is often associated with problems shifting attention, which may be clinically manifested by cognitive inflexibility, obsessive thoughts, compulsive behaviors, excessive worrying, argumentativeness, oppositional behavior or "getting stuck" on certain thoughts or actions. How often are these behaviors handled in strictly behavioral terms? Yet, there has been found to be a strong association with these findings and obsessive-compulsive disorders, oppositional defiant disorders, eating disorders, addictive disorders, anxiety disorders, Tourette’s syndrome and chronic pain--especially when combined with increased basal ganglia activity (Amen, 2007). When clinically indicated, hyperactivity in this part of the brain may be helped by anti-obsessive antidepressants or supplements that increase serotonin levels. Specific behavior modification techniques can also be useful for reducing activity in this part of the brain.
By contrast, when this area of the brain is low in activity it is often associated with low motivation and verbal expression. An "off centered cingulate" may be indicative of a brain injury.
Brain imaging science provides valuable information that can lead to more effective interventions, including natural treatments to optimize the brain whenever possible. The advantage of this work is to make the diagnostic process and treatment recommendations as scientifically reliable as possible. Daniel Amen, has compiled brain science research since 1991. The Amen Clinics website includes 300 SPECT images. You can also read the related scientific literature including:
Summary articles of Amen's work with brain SPECT imaging. Also, over 2300 scientific abstracts on brain imaging for psychiatry and neurology, including extensive tables that summarize the brain SPECT research are categorized for:
ADHD
Brain Trauma
Dementia
Epilepsy
Normal
Obsessive, Compulsive, Spectrum Disorders
Treatment Effects
Violence
A healthy brain is associated with a healthy, successful life. We should all strive to keep our brain healthy. Success starts with a healthy brain. Failure is often the result of a brain gone wrong. Educators should become familiar with the organ of learning and teach students how to optimize their brains. Regardless of how badly you have been to your brain, it may still be possible to change your brain and change your life.
Please browse the Natural Standards database on the research underlying natural treatments in psychiatry and medicine. As educators, we must always remain current with available knowledge in order to ensure best practice.

Building Trust in the Classroom: An essential competency

Are you an educator that accepts you must earn the trust of your students? By contrast, do you expect students will enter your classroom inherently willing, ready, and able to trust they will be met by your good intentions and hard work? Research by Bryk and Schneider (2002) find schools with high trust levels are three times more likely to report gains in reading and math scores. Students that trust in their teachers are more willing to share interests, needs, and personal circumstances. Teachers can thereby use this information to make meaningful connections between students' lives and their learning. Our students who face the greatest challenges to effective education will benefit the most from building upon these connections. The result of this effort can be the difference between their successfully staying in school compared to failure and dropping out.
As educators, we must recognize our students will start each school year with a range of feelings about their teachers. Most of these feelings will have little to do with their personal experience with you. Rather, they will be greatly influenced by their past experience with other educators and adults. The reality is whenever students don't trust us, we must spend considerable time and effort dealing with the symptoms of their distrust, including defiant or disrespectful behavior, instead of the underlying issue. We should be alert to subtle cues that a student is struggling to trust. Otherwise, a lack of trust that remains unnoticed, unaddressed, or ignored will continue to undermine the educational process. Whenever educators exhibit an understanding that not all students enter school feeling trust for educators, they view trust as another competency that must be nurtured and developed in our students. Relational trust is a foundation for learning, teaching, and leading, which allows individuals to connect to the school community. Without this essential trust, an educator's efforts will produce only temporary results. Bill Gates (2005) notes teachers can create a trusting environment by focusing on the three Rs: relationships, relevance, and rigor.
When educators model caring, respectful relationships over time their students are thereby allowed to build trust with them. Educators begin fostering relationships with their students by helping students find personal meaning and relevance in the course material. Educators can further build effective student relationships by maintaining high expectations, even when students are struggling, thus showing your belief that they have what it takes to be successful.

A New Year and a New Chance to Review Our Educational System

We are a country that still strongly believes in states' rights. Not withstanding Lincoln's victory during "the war of northern aggression", as it is known by my colleagues living below the Mason Dixon line, the desire for individual state's rights are still seen most profoundly in regards to our educational system. During the Federal Constitutional Convention (1787), states' rights proponents pressed to include their ideas in the Constitution; others advocated a strong national government, with minimal power residing with the states. The federal system adopted at that convention was a reasonably satisfactory compromise that reconciled state and national power. It included an upper house, the Senate, which provided each state with equal input into the legislative process. In 1791, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution made the states' rights doctrine more explicit: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." However, the federal government can influence state policy even in areas that are constitutionally the purview of the states (e.g., education, local road construction) through withholding funds from states that fail to comply with its wishes. John Stuart Mill (1859) wrote that an "education established and controlled by the State should only exist, if it exists at all, as one among many competing experiments, carried on for the purpose of example and stimulus to keep the others up to a certain standard of excellence." During the nineteenth century the dangers of too much state involvement in the sphere of education was seen as a necessary state intervention to reduce the dominance of the church and thereby to protect the right to education of children against their own parent's belief system. During the late 20th century the term, "states' rights" came to be applied more broadly to a variety of efforts aimed at reducing the powers of the national government.
Educational reform has been adversely impacted by the overarching desire to protect state rights. While other countries were developing a national approach toward effective education, individual states within the United States developed separate statewide standards to guide the education of their children. The result of such a fractured system is most clearly seen in NAEP testing, which is currently the most reliable example of a "national report card."
Compared to other developed countries, the United States continues to exhibit poorer and poorer test results, especially in the area of mathematics and science.
Failure of every state to adopt national standards for learning, clinically-based teacher preparation, and minimal length of a school year will result in a continuation of this downward spiral. While states' rights provide an important opportunity to balance power, strong national standards for assessment, integrity, and fiscal accountability should lead every state's education systems to ensure the highest quality education while mitigating the damaging results of local partisan preferences.

The Importance of Early Educational Programs: A call for action

Research by Christina and Nicholson-Goodman (2005) indicates that high-quality early education programs can produce substantial long-term benefits for children, families, and society. Armed with this knowledge, many states began mounting ambitious efforts to implement high-quality pre-kindergarten programs at universal scale. A Rand Research Brief describes some of the progress states have made and identifies significant policy and practice issues.
The first few years of life are critical for a child's cognitive development and learning. Barnett's (1998) evaluations of well-run prekindergarten programs found that children exposed to high-quality early education were less likely to drop out of school, repeat grades, or need special education, compared with similar children who did not have such exposure. Despite good research linking effective pre-K programs with later academic success, Shore (2002) still found early care and education in the United States was essentially a nonsystem consisting of a "patchwork of programs". After publication of the Rand Education Report (2005) most states began to embrace the value of high-quality early education programs. By 2007, as a candidate for the Presidency of the United States, Barack Obama was expressing his plans to make universal Pre-K programs a national priority. Then came a global recession and a national depression...
Recently, after our country's traditional day of giving thanks, New York's Governor Paterson told reporters: "Twenty-six states shut down their early childhood education and prekindergarten programs, and that's what we're going to have to do..."
Although the economy is now rebounding, states throughout the country will be experiencing tremendous budgetary woes due to the lingering impact of the recent economic depression. New York State, like all states, needs to be fiscally responsible to balance its budget. Yet, cutting early educational programs should not be seen as a first-line solution, especially since such measures would have an adverse ripple-effect! You are encouraged to send a message to the NYS Governor Paterson that these cuts are not the answer!

If you believe this is a crucial issue, I encourage you to review, edit, and send the sample letter below to your state governor and its elected representatives:

Although many states are deciding to cut funding for Pre-K and other early care and learning programs, I encourage you to avoid similar considerations. Cutting educational services to young children should not be one of the earliest options when governments are faced with budget deficits. Pre-K and other early intervening programs have significant short and long-term benefits that will help children succeed in school and in life. Taking that opportunity away from four-year-old children clearly should not be seen as an effective way to balance any budget. For more than a decade, individual state's have been building effective Pre-K programs that yield better, more prepared students. To cut funding now would be a three-fold disservice to the state by:
1. adversely impacting the beginning education of its children;
2. negating years of hard work to build a quality Pre-K system; and
3. leaving scores of tax-paying pre-K teachers unemployed across the state.
Especially during this time of fiscal crisis we must strengthen the educational foundation for our children, so that they don't fall behind. Please review the Christina and Nicholson-Goodman (2005) research on the value of early education and then continue supporting pre-K and other early care and learning programs.
Thank you.

Too often our elected officials make short-term decisions that don't result in long-term solutions. As educators, we need to be advocates for the currently unheard voices of our youngest students. Absence of action to advocate on behalf of your future students may easily result in millions of these students twenty years from now hopelessly asking, "why didn't you do something to help?" I encourage you to be proactive so that day may not come.
Be well!